Leon Trotsky: Letter to Willi Schlamm

December 24, 1935

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 631, title: “Letters About Anton Ciliga”]

Mr. Willi Schlamm

Prague

Dear Comrade:

The bearer of this letter [Ciliga] spent several years in Stalin’s prisons. It is the greatest disgrace of our time that the workers’ organizations remain silent about the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy. This is only the other side of the tendency to capitulate to fascism. However, it is time that those who are not deceived, corrupted, or simply bribed by the Soviet bureaucracy raise their voices in support of the heroic, revolutionary victims of the Bonapartist caste. Don’t you think that yours should be among them? In my opinion, it is a question of a determined and systematic struggle, which could also open up important perspectives for Europe.

Best regards,

Leon Trotsky